(8)Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow/Green vs (9)Tetris 2015
Results Round One '' ''Monday, November 9, 2015 Ulti's Analysis There were very few match pic controversies this contest, but seeing Charizard making out with Blastoise is pretty hilarious. Regardless, this match was used to make Mario 3/RBY comparisons, and the comparison points everyone jumped to were the 2004 and 2009 game contests. In 2004, Zelda 1 laid down an SFF beating of 75-25 on Tetris before losing to Mario 3. The assumption there was that Mario 3 would have also SFFd Tetris into the ground. In 2009, Tetris got through two matches in the fourway format before losing. This time around, it got stuck sharing a poll with Mega Man 2, Mario 1, and Zelda 1. It was once again smashed into the ground by SFF. So when Pokemon RBYG went out there and failed to deliver a similar 75-25 beating to Tetris, people thought this meant bad things for Pokemon in the looming round 2 match. Certainly, Mario 3 would not fail to do such a thing. What people forgot here is that Pokemon exists on a very different plane from normal Nintendo, in that it doesn't really SFF anything, nor does it get SFFd itself. Even against itself, Pokemon polls don't really have SFF in them. We've seen Pokemon RBY and Pokemon GSC in contest polls together, and GSC was basically independent. The point here is this match was just fine for Pokemon. It was a very normal 68-32 beating that had no SFF in it at all, nothing more and nothing less. And given how well respected Tetris is, putting up 68% on it absent of SFF is no joke. Let's not forget that Tetris won a character contest once! Pokemon RBYG was out for blood this year, and had its fans bothered showing up instead of trying to "beat genwunners", I'm convinced it could have won this contest. Ctes's Analysis This was the big match that was gonna give us an idea on how SMB3/Pokemon was gonna go down, likely the most important match of the bracket, at least so we thought pre-contest. My impression of this match apparently went against everyone else's except for like MWC, but I actually ended up being correct. I usually don't brag, but I am gonna take credit for this one. Most of the write-up was inspired from a topic I made where I called Pokemon the favorite after today before Undertale rallying would kick in. First of all though, I must mention what shame it is to see Tetris being placed here in the bracket. It has some strength and it'd be really interesting to see what it could do against new games that are not elite tier like RBY is. I personally think Tetris would held up a lot better against more recent games and this match actually seemed to prove that. The two oldest games in the bracket being fed to Pokemon in the first two rounds is sad. Wish we had Tetris, or MMX I guess, in the bottom quarter of the bracket. That would've been fun. But no one with any contest knowledge doubted Pokemon's chances today. The prediction percentage is relatively low, but that's to be expected when RBY was this low seeded and its facing a game everyone recognizes. When I voted and saw RBY close to 70% of the votes, I was actually really impressed and thought it would definitely be the favorite against SMB3. I didn't feel safe about the match at all, because of things like bracket votes and Nintendo hierarchy, the latter which didn't really appear to be a factor at all in this contest. Also because Tetris is terribly hard to read into. After this match however, everyone laughed at RBY and called an easy win for SMB3. Ulti especially was going this, but while he called a 60-40 victory, though maybe exaggerating, everyone agreed that the outcome was obvious. I guess if you already supported SMB3 that was unlikely I change, but the main reason people came up with was actually that RBY had SFF'd Tetris in the match, which makes it look terrible. I tried to defy this logic, but with no luck. The day before the second round match started I made a topic where my main point was that there was no SFF, but not a single person there agreed with me. Seriously though, why the hell would there be any SFF in that match. It makes sense and thus, RBY didn't underperform. It doesn't matter if Zelda 1 put up 75% on Tetris in 2004, that doesn't mean any Nintendo game SFF's Tetris. Pokemon in particular has shown in the past that it ignores any SFF from other Nintendo game, but that's not even the point. I guess if you look way too simply at things, then yes, Zelda 1 would be stronger than RBY and it went ahead and lost to SMB3 twice, big deal. Not only was the Zelda 1 match 11 years ago and things change. Tetris probably improved since. I don't see why it wouldn't with it becoming huge on mobile and everything.It has had two playrate polls on this site. In 2005, 97.36% had played it, in 2014 that number went up to 98.85%. There was also made some good x-stats analysis by KP through 2009 showing RBy as a clear favorite, which I have sadly lost. Everyone ignored it then though. There is some sense in Zelda 1 SFF'ing Tetris. Both are from the same era, you think of both as classic video games. It's hard to judge, but there's sense to it. What there is no sense in is Tetris getting SFF'd the same way against RBY. People were actually arguing that because Tetris was huge on the Gameboy, RBY should be able to SFF it into the ground even harder than Zelda did, but that was a terrible argument! Did a large amount of the people that played RBY play Tetris too as kids? Yeah, sure, that much I agree with. But did a large amount of the people that played Tetris play RBY as kids too? No, aboslutely not. That's the thing. People argued that both was played on the Gameboy by the same people, but not only was RBY released somewhat late into the lifespan of the Gameboy, there's also the factor that everyone who played anything on any console ever likely played Tetris too. It exists on everything in some format. You can find it on the internet no trouble, you don't even need a console. It had 98.85% of people playing it. That's close enough to 100% that you might as well count it is that. That number is not going to decrease btw. Tetris is totally legit in these contests. It beats me that the same people believing that Tetris could've done damage to the bracket elsewhere believes it should roll over and die here. No way does it get SFF'd by a game like RBY that it has nothing in common with. Everything is has in common with RBY, it has in common with any other game too. They're not comparable and there is no reason for a vast majority of the people that played both to prefer RBY more than there is for them to prefer Tetris more. There is however a vast majority that has only played Tetris of the two. And unlike Pokemon, Tetris is surely one of the least disliked games there is. It's much smaller than it used to, but Pokemon will probably always be anti-voted to some extend. I doubt that's the case with Tetris. You're likely to vote for the game you have played in a match like this. Especially when Tetris is the one you have played. It might not be everyone's favorite, but it's perfect for what it is really. The same can't be said of RBY. The current Pokemon community even dislikes it we learned later during the contest. So let's sum up a bit. We sadly don't have numbers on RBY's playrate, but I think it's safe to assume that a vast majority of the people that haven't played RBY voted Tetris here, except for some people simply bracket voting. Of the people that have played RBY, a majority probably voted for it yes, but it wouldn't necessarily be that large a majority, considering people also have some things against it. Tetris being huge on the gameboy doesn't somehow favor RBY, it favors Tetris obviously. The more places you're a bit hit at, the stronger you become. It's not like Cloud coming to Smash will favor Link in a match between them either. We have Snake as confirmation for this. And it's the same principle here. To put it simply, the people owning gameboy would probably vote RBY more if Tetris wasn't released on it, but the people who didn't own one probably votes Tetris. I really can't understand this stupid logic that you have two groups of people liking each game, then introduce one game to the other group and that game which now more people knows would decrease in popularity between the one. But it wasn't possible for me to defy it before the match came. I'm not saying there's any significant rSFF here either, but it's more likely than the SFF people believed there was. Leon is right that if you believe Tetris was able to rSFF RBY, that doesn't give it good chances against SMB3, a game with just as huge a playrate that was also out on gameboy, but again, that's probably minimal. Of course, SMB3 did have some things in its favor as I mentioned. Bracket votes and Nintendo hierarchy being among them. Rivalry Rumble should be forgotten, but Mario/Bowser vs. Red/Blue does point in SMB3's favor if anything. These things were just not what people used to argue for SMB3 for most parts after today. They used something that actually pointed towards RBY being the favorite, because if you assume that it didn't SFF Tetris, which I have went through why you shouldn't, RBY was absolutely the favorite coming out of this match. It's victory here is really impressive. 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